William Peers
William Peers was born in 1965. He studied sculpture at Falmouth College of Art and was later apprenticed to a sculptor in Oxford. Through this sculptor he began to carve in stone and subsequently spent six months carving in the marble quarries of Carrara, Italy.
In Carrara he met and developed several friendships that were to have a profound effect on his work and life. He went from Italy to Corsica where he found a tranquil retreat to work and develop ideas. He returned to this isolated studio every summer for the next ten years and it was during these visits that his sculpture and philosophy matured and developed.
In the 1990s William started to carve his first bodies of work and, with the help of the John Martin gallery in London, exhibited several times in London. During this time, he married and moved to North Cornwall. There followed a period of fifteen years where he carved exclusively relief, or wall-hung pieces. This discipline sustained his interest, with each piece suggesting new directions to explore.
The ‘figure’ disappeared from his work around 1995 and the area behind the figure that had played the ‘supporting role’ took centre stage. For most of this period William was working in Hornton limestone and in 2007 he bought some Portuguese Marble and created a large series of work that had a quite different feel to all that had gone before. The nature of the marble had a dramatic effect on the work itself. In 2008 William began to carve on work that is free-standing.